Having last year applied to the Governor for permission to visit head-quarters, for a purpose which will be noticed hereafter, I received a favourable answer, and, in the month of February, set off for the depôt of the district preparatory to my departure, where I remained for a month in company with Mr. Ogden and several fellow-scribes.
CHAPTER XXI.
[CLIMATE OF NEW CALEDONIA]—[SCENERY]—[NATURAL PRODUCTIONS]—[ANIMALS]—[FISHES]—[NATIVES]—[THEIR MANNERS AND CUSTOMS]—[DUELLING]—[GAMBLING]—[LICENTIOUSNESS]—[LANGUAGE.]
Ere I proceed on my long journey, I must pause for a little to describe more particularly the country, which I am about to quit, perhaps for ever, and the manners of its savage inhabitants. The climate of New Caledonia is exceedingly variable at all seasons of the year. I have experienced at Stuart's Lake, in the month of July, every possible change of weather within twelve hours; frost in the morning, scorching heat at noon; then rain, hail, snow. The winter season is subject to the same vicissitudes, though not in so extreme a degree: some years it continues mild throughout. These vicissitudes may, I think, be ascribed to local causes—proximity to, or distance from the glaciers of the Rocky Mountains, the direction of the winds, the aspect of the place, &c. Fort St. James is so situated as to be completely exposed to the north-east wind, which wafts on its wings the freezing vapours of the glaciers. The instant the wind shifts to this quarter, a change of temperature is felt; and when it continues to blow for a few hours, it becomes so cold that, even in midsummer, small ponds are frozen over. The surrounding country is mountainous and rocky.
Frazer's Lake is only about thirty miles distant from Fort St. James (on Stuart's Lake), yet there they raise abundance of vegetables, potatoes and turnips, and sometimes even wheat and barley. The post stands in a valley open to the south-west,—a fine champaign country, of a sandy soil; it is protected from the north-east winds by a high ridge of hills. The winter seldom sets in before December, and the navigation is generally open about the beginning of May.
Few countries present a more beautiful variety of scenery than New Caledonia. Stuart's Lake and its environs I have already attempted to describe, but many such landscapes present themselves in different parts of the country, where towering mountains, hill and dale, forest and lake, and verdant plains, blended together in the happiest manner, are taken in by the eye at a glance. Some scenes there are that recall forcibly to the remembrance of a son of Scotia, the hills and glens and "bonnie braes" of his own poor, yet beloved native land. New Caledonia, however, has the advantage over the Old, of being generally well wooded, and possessed of lakes of far greater magnitude; unfortunately, however, the woods are decaying rapidly, particularly several varieties of fir, which are being destroyed by an insect that preys on the bark: when the country is denuded of this ornament, and its ridges have become bald, it will present a very desolate appearance. In some parts of the country, the poplar and aspen tree are to be found, together with a species of birch, of whose bark canoes are built; but there is neither hard wood nor cedar.
Such parts of the district as are not in the immediate vicinity of the regions of eternal snow, yield a variety of wild fruit, grateful to the palate, wholesome, and nutritious. Of these, the Indian pear is the most abundant, and most sought after, both by natives and whites; when fully ripe, it is of a black colour, with somewhat of a reddish tinge, pear-shaped, and very sweet to the taste. The natives dry them in the sun, and afterwards bake them into cakes, which are said to be delicious; for my own part, having seen the process of manufacturing them, I could not overcome my prejudices so far as to partake of a delicacy in whose composition filth formed so considerable an ingredient. When dried, the cakes are placed in wooden vessels to receive the juice of green fruit, which is expressed by placing weights upon it, in wooden troughs, from which spouts of bark draw off the liquid into the vessels containing the dry fruit; this being thoroughly saturated, is again bruised with the unclean hand, then re-formed into cakes, and dried again; and these processes are repeated alternately, until the cakes suit the taste of the maker. Blue berries are plentiful in some parts of the district; there is a peculiar variety of them, which I preferred to any fruit I ever tasted; it is about the size of a musket-ball, of a purple colour, translucid, and in its taste sweet and acid are deliciously blended.
The district is still rich in fur-bearing animals, especially beavers and martens, which are likely to continue numerous for many years to come, as they find a safe retreat among the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains, where they multiply undisturbed. This is the great beaver nursery, which continues to replace the numbers destroyed in the more exposed situations; there is, nevertheless, a sensible decrease in the returns of the fur since the introduction of steel traps among the natives: there are also otters, musk-rats, minxes, and lynxes. Of the larger quadrupeds bears only are numerous, and in all their varieties, grizzled, black, brown, and chocolate: numbers of them are taken by the natives in wooden traps. A chance moose or reindeer is sometimes found. The mountain sheep generally keeps aloft in the most inaccessible parts of the mountains, and is seldom "bagged" by a Carrier, but often by the Tsekanies. I have before observed that rabbits sometimes abound. Another small animal, whose flesh is delicious in season, the marmot, is found in great numbers. In the neighbourhood of Fort Alexandria, the jumping deer, or chevreuil, is abundant. To these add dog and horse flesh, and you have all the varieties of animal food the country affords to its inhabitants, civilized or savage.
A most destructive little animal, the wood-rat, infests the country, and generally nestles in the crevices of the rocks, but prefers still more human habitations; they domicile under the floors of out-buildings, and not content with this, force their way into the inside, where they destroy and carry off every thing they can; nor is there any way of securing the property in the stores from their depredations but by placing it in strong boxes. When fairly located, it is almost impossible to root them out. They are of a grey colour, and of nearly the size and form of the common rat, but the tail resembles that of the ground squirrel.
The birds of this country are the same as in Canada. I observed no strange variety, except a species of curlieu that frequents the plains of Fort Alexandria in the summer. Immense flocks of cranes are seen in autumn and spring, flying high in the air; in autumn directing their flight towards the south, and in spring towards the north.